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His Contemporary date is available as a download from emusic.com. I got it that way and like it a lot. Land's West Coast Blues is in my stash there.

Blue Note has not reissued that wonderful record. I've got it also along with his other session for Blue Note which also remains unissued.

So what you are actually saying is that he a financialy successful musician but not that he is a multi-millionaire. No problem if he is but you didn't show that to be the case. Also, if you think John Zorn has wide recognition you are dreaming. Kenny G has wide recognition. John Zorn is pretty much an unknown.

I'm curious. How did John Zorn come to be a multi-millionaire? Was he born to great wealth or is it through the millions of recordings he sells? Or the football stadiums He sells out? Rich or poor he's mostly not my cup of tea. Great musicians have died in poverty and great musicians have been wealthy. Check out Benny Carter for that. He evidently owned lots of Beverly Hills real estate. Motzart died poor (bad financial mangagement evidently) and Rossini was a rich man. To those who don't think Colbert is funny what can be said. Humor is personal. I laugh when I watch his show. Sure with the Zorn thing he was engaging in a bit of antiintellectualism but the number of people who think that playing like that is 'genius' or even music at all is a pretty low number. For myself, I acknowedge that it's music but I find it unlistenable. I bought Braxton's 'For Alto' 2lp Delmark when it was first released, played it a few times and now it's sat on my shelf for thirty years. Enough rambling. Enjoy what you like and let others do the same.

Nothing wrong with the question about religion and I'll leave it for another time as well. For the record I'm an athiest but I do know that religion or spiritual belief has fueled an awful lot of great music. You know: Coltrane, Motzart, Handel, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson and the list just goes on and on. Same thing in painting and sculpture. You don't have to believe to feel the depth and power of the artist's belief. Having heard Marion Williams it was clear that it was the power of her belief that made her singing so powerful. Sure she had a great gift or whatever you call the ability to sing like that. But it was what she infused it with that made it worth listening to. I'm sure she would have said that it was divine muscle that got her the grant. That's who she was.

I don't have the time now to pull up the quote but someone in this thread did drop the notion that corporate backing might have had something to do with selections for the grant. I'll just say that the greatest artist I've ever seen who won this prize was Marion Williams. I had the pleasure and joy of hearing her live once. It was an experience I'll never forget. I've some great singers; from jazz to opera to soul, but never have I heard a voice like that. They should have given her a thousand prizes.

Well I guess everyone has had their shot at Ms Carter by now. What she does with the money is her buisness. That's the whole point of these grants. Maybe she'll by a better instruement, maybe she'll buy a better home. Maybe she'll take time to compose. Maybe she'll buy some nice new cloths. It's her buisness. I happen to think that she is a bit young to have won this award but what she does with it ain't no buisness of mine. What did Max Roach do with his? He was a genius but where'd the money go. What did Marion Williams do with hers? She built a church. God bless her. John Zorn has a zillion projects going and probably he'll use it to fund them. Or maybe if he has a sick relative he'll use it to pay their medical bills. That's what no strings attached means. And since when did Max Roach, Marion Williams, George Russell, Anthony Braxton, or Ornette Coleman have 'Corporate backing'? A whole lot of sour grapes going on in this thread. We ought to be happy that at least one artist won't have to worry about paying the bills for the next five years instead of bitching about which one that is. Thirty or so years ago Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now that was something to bitch about!!

Spider John Koerner and Dave Snaker Ray. Wow. I haven't heard those guys in at least thirty five years. Do you know what they are up to these days> I used to have a great lp by Koerner called 'Running Jumping Standing Still' that paired him with a wonderful pianist and singer. Wish I still had that one. Seems like such a long time ago.

Ponder has some nice solo space on this outing. Overall this date is nice but hardly essential. I've got it on LP but haven't played it in quite a while. If you can pick it up at a reasonable price i'd say get it but don't be emptying your wallet for this one. Unless of course you're a Ponder completest. Then reason goes out the window.

Teddy Wilson

Yes

I heard him last week with Randy Weston at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors (Billy Harper was also in the band) and he seemed ok. Hope it's nothing serious. Get well soon Dewey.

This one came in the mail about 2 hours ago. Listening to it now and it sounds wonderful. I've always been partial to this guy. Guess why.

Saw her backing up Sonny Stitt at the Village Gate in the early to mid 1970s. I had no idea who she was at the time but I remember thinking she was really good. Just Stitt, Bu Pleasant and I think Billy James on drums.

I recently downloaded the Prestige twofer from emusic.com and like it a lot. I'd never heard any of his recordings before. A real find for me. Is the RCA in print?

I've got the Blue Note Conn and the session with Curtis Fuller and Hampton Hawes. Love them both. Julius Watkins is an excellent player-not that I'm an expert on the art of French Horn playing or anything like that. I just know what I like, and I like Watkins.

This is a fine swinging session. I bought this one on lp over thirty years ago and have given it as a gift several times on CD. Fine heads, great playing by the tenor greats, and Shirley Scott is wonderful here. Actually, Shirley Scott is wonderful anywhere.

I think he was having problems with certain substances.

I'm pretty sure that the expression 'you don't miss your water.....' was used in the blues long before William Bell's wonderful recording.

You obviously know nothing about employment law in the US, or what kind of protections exist and don't exist for most employees. That's what I said. So, go on... MG Do you really want me to? Most employees in America are "at will" - I can quit whenever I want to, you can fire me whenever you want to. This doesn't mean that employers don't make some allowances regarding notice of termination and severance pay. But most employers are free to give the notice they feel like giving, be it 0 days, 3 days, two weeks, or whatever, and pay severance if and only if they want to. They treated her like dirt. Three days notice. That's worse than like dirt. The will treat the rest of us (the customers) worse. These are sad sad days for the buisness end of Jazz.

'The Warm Sound is a favorite of mine. I had the pleasure of hearing him live once. He was in a band called Dameronia. This was Philly Joe Jones' group dedicated to the music of Tad Dameorn. Frank Wess was also in the group and it was absolutely terrific. A night to remember.

McCormack did not criticize Hopkins work or the album in question. He made light of Hopkins the man. Any liner notes out there written in Goodman's lifetime saying that he was an SOB. I've read that a number of times but never on the back of one of his records. To my mind that would have been a slap in the face to the arist by the record company. That's what Bluesville (Prestige) did to Hopkins. Not printing it might have been a sight to McCormack but it wasn't his record. But hey, maybe Lightnin' Hopkins could have been hired to write a blurb on the dust jacket of one of McCormack's books and he could have written that McCormack was a no good so and so who shirked his responsibilities to his family and children and only was good for studying old musicians and nothing else in life. That would have evened things up. And maybe McCormack wouldn't have cared because hey, he got paid after all. Let me agree with an above post about the work of Doug Ramsey. To think that I used to watch him to the news on WPIX here in NYC. His online blog is also wonderful. Back inthe days of Blue Note Lps I was particularly fond of the writing of Nat Hentoff and A.B. Spellman. Learned lots from their writing. Lots more to learn.

This is exactly how it should be and even more so in this day and age when you don't read the notes until you open the CD (presumably after you've purchased it). Though I don't buy jazz magazines much anymore I used to subscribe to Coda. Coda sometimes published reviews critical of recordings on its own Sackville label (and I understand Cadence did the same with recordings on its labels). They really had a policy of not editing their writers' work. preumeably they didn't put the review on the cover of the record. I've never seen a record with notes that say the record is terrible and noone should buy it. Notes are generally at least synpathetic to the artist and the artists goals and achievments. I don't own a record company (not even in my dreams) but if I did I'd try to enclose the music in an attractive package that gave the consumer some idea of what I was selling. I am SELLING it after all. It is a product that is for SALE. If I want someone to buy it I might at least try to give some idea why they should buy my product and not someone elses. If I hired someone to write liner notes-inside or outside notes-I would presume that they would be respectful toward the artist that I thought highly enough of to record. I would hope that if they were going to trash the artist they would tell me and allow me to hire someone else for the job. On the recording in question, McCormack gives us an in depth portrait of Hopkins as a terrible human being. To my mind he was just showing off. I just thought that Lightnin' Hopkins deserved better from his record company. Of course if he had had some say in what the package looked like.......But that would give the artist some control over his work and we can't have that now can we.

I never thought the notes were read until the record was in someone's home. Do you read notes before purchase? For that matter, do you look at the friggin' label before you get it home? Yes many people would read the notes in the store. Can't believe I'm telling you something you don't know.

Well obviously notes on the inside are not intended to sell the record. Forty years ago or so I used to by rock and folk lps. Sometimes I'd see a record in the store by an artist, or group I'd never heard of with no notes no listing of the musicians no nothing on the cover. The record company wasn't doing anything to help me know what the hell was inside the pretty package. So I would leave the pretty package on the shelf. When I began buying jazz records I would spend hours in record stores reading liner notes, getting an education on the musicians and styles. Those notes often helped me decide what to buy-they helped sell the record. When CDs came in the record store thing went down the drain. Even the notes on the inside are often in such small print that they become useless. This developement certainly made it more difficult for me to take a chance on an artist I might not be familiar with. Nowadays we get treated to record companies crying that the 'procuct' isn't selling and they don't have a clue why. Maybe they just don't know what sells it.